Project Gutenberg's Trifles for the Christmas Holidays, by H. S. Armstrong

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Title: Trifles for the Christmas Holidays

Author: H. S. Armstrong

Release Date: January 21, 2006 [EBook #17562]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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TRIFLES

FOR THE

CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS.

BY

H.S. ARMSTRONG.

PHILADELPHIA:
J.B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1869.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by

HENRY S. ARMSTRONG,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
District of Louisiana.

TO

JAS. DAVIDSON HILL,

OF NEW ORLEANS,

A CHOSEN SCHOOL-FELLOW, A STANCH COMRADE IN ARMS, AND THE TRUE FRIEND OF
LATER YEARS,

THESE

"Trifles"

ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.

CONTENTS.

THE OVERTURE 9

A CHRISTMAS MELODY 15

STORY OF A BEAST 29

LEAVES IN THE LIFE OF AN IDLER 45

MR. BUTTERBY RECORDS HIS CASE 71

DIAMONDS AND HEARTS 98

TRIFLES

FOR

THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS.

THE OVERTURE.

Christmas! What worldly care could ever lessen the joy of that eventful
day? At your first waking in the morning, when you lie gazing in drowsy
listlessness at the brass ornament on your bed-tester, when the ring of
the milkman is like a dream, and the cries of the bread-man and
newspaper-boy sound far off in the distance, it peals at you in the
laughter and gay greetings of the servants in the yard. Your senses are
aroused by a promiscuous discharging of pistols, and you are filled with
a vague thought that the whole city has been formed into a line of
skirmishers. You are startled by a noise on the front pavement, which
sounds like an energetic drummer beating the long roll on a barrel-head;
and you have an indistinct idea that some improvident urchin (up since
the dawn) has just e